“Could I have had
my will, I should have been born a lord; but one would not be a booby lord, neither. I
am haunted by an odd fancy of driving down the great North Road in a chaise and four,
about fifty years ago, and coming to the inn at Ferry-bridge, with outriders, white
favours, and a coronet on the panels; and then, too, I choose my companion in the
coach. . . . . Perhaps I should incline to draw lots with Pope, but that he was deformed, and did not sufficiently relish
Milton and Shakespeare. As it is, we can enjoy his verses and theirs too. . . . .
Goldsmith is a person whom I considerably
affect, notwithstanding his blunders and his misfortunes. . . . . But then I could
never make up my mind to his preferring Rowe and
Dryden to the worthies of the Elizabethan
age; nor could I, in like manner, forgive Sir
Joshua—whom I number among those whose existence was marked with a white stone—his treating Nicholas
Poussin with contempt.

“Who would have missed the sight of the Louvre in

274

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL MEMORANDA.

all its glory to have been one of
those, whose works enriched it? Would it not have been giving a certain good for ail
uncertain advantage? No: I am as sure (if it is not presumption to say so) of what
passed through Raphael’s mind as of what
passes through my own; and I know the difference between seeing (though that is a rare
privilege) and producing such perfection.

“At one time I was so devoted to Rembrandt, that I think if the Prince of Darkness had made me the offer
in some rash mood, I should have been tempted to close with it, and should have become
(in happy hour and in downright earnest) the great master of light and shade.

“As I look at my long-neglected copy of the ‘Death of Clorinda,’ golden gleams play upon the canvas,
as they used when I painted it. . . . . The years that are fled knock at the door and
enter. The rainbow is in the sky again. I see the skirts of the departed years. All
that I have thought and felt has not been in vain.

“It is now seventeen years* since I was studying in the Louvre;
but long after I returned, and even still, I sometimes dream of being there again.

“I have in my own mind made the excuse for ——, that he could
only make a first sketch, and was obliged to lose the greatest part of his time in
waiting for windfalls of heads and studies. I have sat to him
twice, and each time I offered to come again; and he said he would let me know, but I
heard no more of it. The

“Taking one thing with another, I have no great cause to
complain. If I had been a merchant, a bookseller, or the proprietor of a newspaper,
instead of what I am, I might have had more money, or possessed a town and country
house, instead of lodging in a first or second floor, as it may happen. But what then?
I see how the man of fortune and business passes his time. He is up and in the City by
eight, swallows his breakfast in haste, attends a meeting of creditors, must read
Lloyd’s lists, consult the price of consols, study the markets, look into his
accounts, pay his workmen, and superintend his clerks.

“He has hardly a minute of the day to himself, and perhaps in
the four-and-twenty hours does not do a single thing that he would do, if he could help
it. Surely this sacrifice of time and inclination requires some compensation; which it
meets with.

“But how am I entitled to make my fortune (which cannot be done
without all this anxiety and drudgery) who do hardly anything at all, and never
anything but what I like to do? I rise when I please, breakfast at
length, write what comes into my head, and after taking a mutton chop and a
dish of strong tea, go to the play, and thus my time passes. . . . . It was but the
other day that I had to get up a little earlier than usual, to go into the City about
some money transactions, which appeared to me a prodigious hardship. If so, it was

276

MR. H. A SOMNAMBULIST.

plain that I must lead a tolerably
easy life: nor should I object to passing mine over again.

“I am (or used some time ago to be) a sleep-walker, and know
how the thing is. In this sort of disturbed, unsound sleep, the eyes are not closed,
and are attracted by the light. I used to get up and go towards the window, and make
violent efforts to, throw it open. The air in some measure revived me, or I might have
tried to fling myself out. I saw objects indistinctly—the houses, for instance, facing
me on the opposite side of the street—but still it was some time before I could
recognize them, or recollect where I was: that is, I was still asleep, and the dimness
of my senses (as far as it prevailed) was occasioned by the greater numbness of my
memory. . . . . I have observed that whenever I have been waked up suddenly, and not
left to myself to recover from this state of mental torpor, I have been always dreaming
of something, i. e., thinking, according to the tenour of the
question I never dream of the face of any one I am particularly attached to. I have
thought almost to agony of the same person for years, nearly without ceasing, so as to
have her face always before me, and to be haunted by a perpetual consciousness of
disappointed passion; and yet I never in all that time dreamt of this person more than
once or twice, and then not vividly.

“I should have made a very bad Endymion, in this sense; for all the time the heavenly goddess was
shining over my head, I should never have had a

HIS DREAMS.

277

thought about her. If I had waked and found her gone, I might have been in a
considerable taking.

“Coleridge used to
laugh at me for my want of the faculty of dreaming; and once, on my saying that I did
not like the preternatural stories in the ‘Arabian Nights’ (for the comic parts I love dearly), he said,
‘that must be because you never dream. There is a class of poetry built on
this foundation, which is surely no inconsiderable part of our nature, since we are
asleep, and building up imaginations of this sort half our time.’ I had
nothing to say against it: it was one of his conjectural subtleties, in which he excels
all the persons I ever knew; but I had some satisfaction in finding afterwards that I
had Bishop Atterbury expressly on my side in
this question, who has recorded his detestation of ‘Sinbad the
Sailor’ in an interesting letter to Pope. Perhaps he, too, did not dream.

“Yet I dream sometimes: I dream of the Louvre—intus et in cute. I dreamt I was there a few weeks
ago, and that the old scene returned—that I looked for my favourite pictures, and found
them gone or erased. The dream of my youth came upon me; a glory and a vision
unutterable, that comes no more but in darkness and in sleep; my heart rose up, and I
fell on my knees, and lifted up my voice and wept; and I awoke.

“I also dreamt a little while ago, that I was reading the
‘New Héloise’ to an
old friend, and came to the concluding passage in Julia’s farewell letter, which had much the same effect upon me.
The words are, ‘Trop heureuse d’acheter au prix
de ma vie le droit de t’aimer

“I used to sob over this passage twenty years ago; and in this
dream about it lately I seemed to live these twenty years over again in one short moment. I
do not dream ordinarily; and there are people who never could see anything in the
‘New Héloise.’ Are we not
quits?

“I have a sneaking kindness for a popish priest in this
country; and to a Catholic peer I would willingly bow in passing. What are national
antipathies, individual attachments, but so many expressions of the moral principle in
forming our opinions?

“Once asking a friend why he did not bring forward an
explanation of a circumstance in which his conduct had been called in question, he
said, ‘His friends were satisfied on the subject, and he cared very little
about the opinion of the world.’ I made answer that I did not consider
this a good ground to rest his defence upon, for that a man’s friends seldom
thought better of him than the world did. I see no reason to alter this opinion.

“One of the pleasantest things in the world is going a
journey, but I like to go by myself. I can enjoy society in a room, but out of doors
nature is company enough for me. I am then never less alone than when alone. . . . . I
cannot see the wit of walking and talk-

SOCIETY IN SOLITUDE.

279

ing at the same time. When I am in the country, I wish to vegetate like the country.
I am not for criticising hedgerows and black cattle. I go out of town to forget the
town and all that is in it. There are those who for this purpose go to watering-places,
and carry the metropolis with them. I like more elbow-room and fewer incumbrances. . .
. . Give me the clear blue sky over my head, and the green turf beneath my feet, a
winding road before me, and a three hours’ march to dinner—and then to thinking.
It is hard if I cannot start some game on these lone heaths. I laugh, I run, I leap, I
sing for joy. From the point of yonder rolling cloud I plunge into my past being, and
revel there, as the sun-burnt Indian plunges headlong into the wave that wafts him to
his native shore.

“Then long-forgotten things, like ‘sunken wrack and
sunless treasuries,’ burst upon my eager sight, and I begin to feel,
think, and be myself again. Instead of an awkward silence, broken by attempts at wit or
dull commonplaces, mine is that undisturbed silence of the heart, which alone is
perfect eloquence. No one likes puns, alliterations, antitheses, argument, and analysis
better than I do; but I sometimes had rather be without them. . . . . I like to be
either entirely to myself or entirely at the disposal of others; to talk or be silent,
to walk or sit still, to be sociable or solitary. . . . I want to see my vague notions
float like the down of the thistle before the breeze, and not to have them entangled in
the briars and thorns of controversy. . . . . I grant there is one subject on which it
is pleasant

280

RECOLLECTIONS OF WALKS.

to talk on a journey; and
that is, what we shall have for supper when we get to an inn at night.

“The sight of the setting sun does not affect me so much from
the beauty of the object itself, as from the glory kindled through the glowing skies,
the rich broken columns of light, or the dying streaks of day, as that it indistinctly
recalls to me numberless thoughts and feelings with which, through many a year and
season, I have watched his bright descent in the warm summer evenings, or beheld him
struggling to cast a ‘farewell sweet’ through the thick clouds of
winter. I love to see the trees first covered with leaves in the spring, the primroses
peeping out from some sheltered bank, and the innocent lambs running races on the soft
green turf; because, at that birth-time of nature, I have always felt sweet hopes and
happy wishes—which have not been fulfilled.

“I remember, when I was abroad, the trees, and grass, and wet
leaves, rustling in the walks of the Tuileries, seemed to be as much English, to be as
much the same trees and grass that I had always been used to—as the sun shining over my
head was the same sun which I saw in England; the faces only were foreign to me.

“I remember once strolling along the margin of a stream,
skirted with willows and plashy sedges, in one of those low sheltered valleys on
Salisbury Plain, where the monks of former ages had planted chapels and built
hermits’ cells. There was a little parish church near, but tall elms and
quivering alders hid it from my sight;

LOVE OF MISCHIEF IN CHILDREN.

281

when, all of a sudden, I was startled by the
sound of the full organ pealing on the ear, accompanied by rustic voices, and the
willing choir of village maids and children.

“I remember finding Dr.
Chalmers’ ‘Sermons
on Astronomy’ in the orchard at Burford-bridge, near Boxhill, and passing
a whole and very delightful morning in reading them, without quitting the shade of an
apple-tree.

“Civility is with me a jewel. I like a little comfortable
cheer, and careless, indolent chat. I hate to be always wise, or aiming at wisdom. I
have enough to do with literary cabals, questions, critics, actors, essaywriting,
without taking them out with me for recreation and into all companies. I wish at these
times to pass for a good-humoured fellow; and good-will is all I ask in return to make
good company. I do not desire to be always posing myself or others with the questions
of fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute, &c. I must unbend sometimes. I must
occasionally lie fallow. The kind of conversation that I affect most is what sort of
day it is, and whether it is likely to rain or hold up fine for tomorrow. This I
consider as enjoying the otium cum
dignitate—as the end and privilege of a life of study.

“It vexes me beyond all bearing to see children kill flies for
sport; for the principle is the same in the most deliberate and profligate acts of
cruelty they can afterwards exercise upon their fellow-creatures. And yet I

282

THE QUESTION DISCUSSED WITH COLERIDGE.

let moths burn
themselves to death in the candle, for it makes me mad; and I say it is in vain to
prevent fools from rushing upon destruction.

“The author of the ‘Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ (who sees farther
into such things than most people) could not understand why I should bring a charge of
wickedness against an infant before it could speak, merely
for squalling and straining its lungs a little.

“Mr. Coleridge once
asked me if I had ever known a child of a naturally wicked disposition? and I answered,
‘Yes; that there was one in the house with me, that cried from morning to
night, for spite.’ I was laughed at for this
answer, but still I do not repent it. It appeared to me that the child took a delight
in tormenting itself and others; that the love of tyrannizing over others and
subjecting them to its caprices was a full compensation for the beating it received. .
. . . I was supposed to magnify and overrate the symptoms of the disease, and to make a
childish humour into a bugbear; but indeed I have no other idea of what is commonly
understood by wickedness than that perversion of the will, or love of mischief for its
own sake, which constantly displays itself (though in trifles and on a ludicrously
small scale) in early childhood. I have often been reproached with extravagance for
considering things only in their abstract principles, and with heat and ill-temper, for
getting into a passion about what no ways concerned me.

“If any one wishes to see me quite calm, they may cheat me in
a bargain, or tread upon my toes; but a

HE SPEAKS OF HIS OWN CHARACTER.

283

truth repelled, a sophism repeated, totally
disconcerts me, and I lose all patience. I am not, in the ordinary acceptation of the
term, a good-natured man; that is, many things annoy me besides what interferes with my
own ease and interest. I hate a lie; a piece of injustice wounds me to the quick,
though nothing but the report of it reach me. Therefore I have made many enemies and
few friends; for the public know nothing of wellwishers, and keep a wary eye on those
who would reform them.

“Coleridge used to
complain of my irascibility in this respect, and not without reason. Would that he had
possessed a little of my tenaciousness and jealousy of temper; and then, with his
eloquence to paint the wrong, and acuteness to detect it, his country and the cause of
liberty might not have fallen without a struggle.

“I care little what any one says of me, particularly behind my
back, and in the way of critical and analytical discussion; it is looks of dislike and
scorn that I answer with the worst venom of my pen.

“The expression of the face wounds me more than the
expressions of the tongue. If I have in one instance mistaken this expression, or
resorted to this remedy where I ought not, I am sorry for it. But the face was too fine
over which it mantled, and I am too old to have misunderstood it.

“The craniologists give me the organ of local memory, of which
faculty I have not a particle; though they

284

HIS OWN CHARACTER.

say that my frequent allusions to conversations that occurred many years ago prove the
contrary. I once spent a whole evening with Dr.
Spurzheim, and I utterly forget all that passed, except that the doctor
waltzed, before we parted!

“The only faculty I do possess is that of a certain morbid
interest in things, which makes me equally remember or anticipate by nervous analogy
whatever touches it; and for this our nostrum-mongers have no specific organ, so that I
am quite left out of their system. No wonder that I should pick a quarrel with it.

“I have never had a plaster cast* taken of myself. In truth, I
rather shrink from the experiment; for I know I should be very much mortified if it did
not turn out well, and should never forgive the unfortunate artist who had lent his
assistance to prove that I looked like a blockhead.

“After a certain period we live only in the past. Give me back
one single evening at Boxhill, after a stroll in the deep-empurpled woods, before
Bonaparte was yet beaten, ‘with wine
of Attic taste,’ when wit, beauty, friendship, presided at the board! But
no! Neither the time nor friends that are fled can be recalled.

“I have made this capital mistake all my life, in imagining
that those objects which lay open to all, and excited an interest merely from the idea of them, spoke

* One was taken, however, after death.

LONDON AND COUNTRY SOCIETY.

285

a common language to all; and
that nature was a kind of universal home, where all ages, sexes, classes, meet. Not
so.

“The vital air, the sky, the woods, the streams—all these go
for nothing, except with a favoured pen. . . . . I can understand the Irish character
better than the Scotch. I hate the formal crust of circumstances and the mechanism of
society. I have been recommended, indeed, to settle down into some respectable
profession for life:—

Ah! why so soon the blossom tear?

I am ‘in no haste to be venerable.’

“I do not think there is anything deserving the name of
society to be found out of London; and that for the two following reasons. First, there
is neighbourhood elsewhere, accidental or unavoidable
acquaintance; people are thrown together by chance, or grow together like trees: you
can pick your society nowhere but in London. Secondly, London is the only place in
which each individual in company is treated according to his value in company, and to
that only. . . . . It is known in Manchester or Liverpool what every man in the room is
worth in land or money. . . . . .

“When I was young, I spent a good deal of my time at
Manchester and Liverpool, and I confess I give the preference to the former. There you
were oppressed only by the aristocracy of wealth; in the latter by the aristocracy of
wealth and letters by turns. . . . .

“For my part, I am shy even of actresses, and should not think
of leaving my card with Madame Vestris. I

286

HIS LOVE OF PARADOX.

am for none of these bonnes fortunes; but for a list of humble
beauties, servant-maids and shepherd-girls, with their red elbows, hard hands, black
stockings, and mobcaps, I could furnish out a gallery equal to Cowley’s, and paint them half as well.

“I have been sometimes accused of a fondness for paradoxes,
but I cannot in my own mind plead guilty to the charge. I do not indeed swear by an
opinion because it is old; but neither do I fall in love with every extravagance at
first sight, because it is new. I conceive that a thing may have been repeated a
thousand times without being a bit more reasonable than it was the first time; and I
also conceive that an argument or an observation may be very just, though it may so
happen that it was never stated before. But I do not take it for granted that every
prejudice is ill-founded, nor that every paradox is self-evident, merely because it
contradicts the vulgar opinion. . . . .

“I do not see much use in dwelling on a commonplace, however
fashionable or well-established; nor am I very ambitious of starting the most specious
novelty, unless I imagine I have reason on my side. Originality implies independence of
opinion; but differs as widely from mere singularity as from the tritest
truism.”

“He who can truly say nihil humani
a me alienum futo, has a world of cares on his hands, which
nobody knows anything of but himself. This is not one of the

DISADVANTAGE OF PHILANTHROPY.

287

least miseries of a studious life. The common
herd do not by any means give him full credit for his gratuitous sympathy with their
concerns, but are struck with his lack-lustre eye and wasted appearance. They cannot
translate the expression of his countenance out of the vulgate; they mistake the
knitting of his brows for the frown of displeasure, the paleness of study for the
languor of sickness, the furrows of thought for the regular approaches of old age. They
read his looks, not his books; have no clue to penetrate the last recesses of the mind;
and attribute the height of abstraction to more than an ordinary share of
stupidity.

“‘Mr. Hazlitt
never seems to take the slightest interest in anything,’ is a remark I have often
heard made in a whisper.

Francis Atterbury, bishop of Rochester (1663-1732)
The high-church bishop of Rochester; he was imprisoned in the Tower in 1720 for his
Jacobite associations and spent his later years in France.

Thomas Chalmers (1780-1847)
Scottish divine and leader of the Free Church of Scotland; he was professor of moral
philosophy at St. Andrews (1823-28) and professor of divinity at Edinburgh
(1828-43).

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)
English poet and philosopher who projected Lyrical Ballads (1798)
with William Wordsworth; author of Biographia Literaria (1817), On the Constitution of the Church and State (1829) and other
works.

Abraham Cowley (1618-1667)
English royalist poet; his most enduring work was his posthumously-published Essays (1668).

John Dryden (1631-1700)
English poet laureate, dramatist, and critic; author of Of Dramatick
Poesie (1667), Absalom and Achitophel (1681), Alexander's Feast; or the Power of Musique (1697), The Works of Virgil translated into English Verse (1697), and Fables (1700).

Oliver Goldsmith (1728 c.-1774)
Irish miscellaneous writer; his works include The Vicar of
Wakefield (1766), The Deserted Village (1770), and She Stoops to Conquer (1773).

William Hazlitt (1778-1830)
English essayist and literary critic; author of Characters of
Shakespeare's Plays (1817), Lectures on the English Poets
(1818), and The Spirit of the Age (1825).

William Carew Hazlitt (1834-1913)
The son of William Hazlitt (1811–1893) and grandson of the critic; after education at
Merchant Taylors' School he worked as a journalist, historian, and bibliographer.

John Milton (1608-1674)
English poet and controversialist; author of Comus (1634), Lycidas (1638), Areopagitica (1644), Paradise Lost (1667), and other works.

Emperor Napoleon I (1769-1821)
Military leader, First Consul (1799), and Emperor of the French (1804), after his
abdication he was exiled to Elba (1814); after his defeat at Waterloo he was exiled to St.
Helena (1815).

Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
English poet and satirist; author of The Rape of the Lock (1714)
and The Dunciad (1728).

Nicholas Poussin (1594-1665)
French landscape and historical painter whose neoclassical compositions were much admired
in Britain.

The Arabian Nights. (1705-08 English trans.). Also known as The Thousand and One Nights. Antoine Galland's
French translation was published 1704-17, from which the original English versions were
taken.